effort values

As you may or may not know, EV's are a very importany part of training any Pokemon.Just starting to be recognized by People other than breeders, EV training helps pokemon become more adept in a certain area.They can be used to give any Pokemon the edge in a battle, or keep a pokemon in one.For example, if you wanted to give a Raikou aboost in its Speed, you would simply train it against pokemon that's speed stat is dominant.Another example is ifsomeone wanted to help Tyranitar land a bigger hit with Crunch, which would have that person battle against pokemon that are more dominant in Special Attack.With that in mind, let's start with the basics. If you're wondering what "EV" means, it simply means "Effort Value."It makes sense since you need to put your effort into battling certain Pokemon in order to get rewarded for your efforts. Kind of like the episodes in Cartoon, since the trainers in episodes put their high efforts on their Pokemon.If you do the same, you'll be rewarded for your efforts on your Pokemon. In the game, the Effort values are hidden values, so you can't just look somewhere in the pokemon's statistics to figure out how many Effort Values you have already earned for a certain stat.Because of this limit, calculating Effort Values requires you to record each pokemon, or at least the Evs gained from the Pokemon.If you want an easy way to dothis, just make a chart with six columns, label them according to the six different stats, and place a tally for each point gained in that stat.So now you're in a battle. Keep in mind that only battles where EXP counts gives you an Effort Point, so no battling over a link cabel or battle tower to get Effort points.Anyway, you have a Linoone, and you just defeated a Zubat. Now, just like a Pokemon's Base Values are set in stone (like Slaking always having a base value of 160 attack),Evs are the same way. Anyone who's ever trained a Zubat knows that the dominant stat is Speed, so if you look at the Speed EV chart, you will see that Zubat gives 1 EV to Speed.Most of the time, it's this easy. But sometimes you will find that a pokemon gives EVs in an odd stat, like Charizard giving 3 EVs to Special attack or that a Pokemon gives EVs to more than one stat.Like Venusaur giving 2 EVs to Special attack and1 EV to Special Defense. Just watch out for those things. If you can't find EV, just use the pokedex to find it.Now to explain how these work. Say the Linoone battled 4 Zubats and aquired 4 EVs in the Pokemon's Speed EV. When it levels up, it will gain one more point to its Speed stat than if had battled three Zubats and one Geodude.This is because for every 4 Effore Points youget towards a certain stat, you get one point more to the stat. If you wish for a less technical explanation, let's call each Effort Value a Piece of Heart, like any Lefent of Zelda game.If you get four Pieces of Heart, you get a Heart Container. It's the same way with Effort Values. Of course, there has to be a limit to this, seeing as if you battle 3,996 Zubats, you would have a lot of time on your hands, and a Linoone with 999 located in its Speed stat.So, what are the limits? Well for startes, youcan only gain 510 Effort Values before they will stop being counted. 510 can be called out "Overall Maximum", if you want a technical term. So this brings the Effort Points tou can gain to 63, once again as a maximum.But this is still a bit much to add to any one stat, and it would make any Mewtwo have an ansurt amout of Special Attack still, or Blissey still having that huge potential to go over 700 hit points.So, to make it limited still, there can only be a mazimum of 255 Effort Points per stat, giving a pokemon a potential 32 point increase in any stat.So now, in terms of pokemon you have to battle, let's say you want that Linoone to get its Maximum speed. You would have to battle 255 Zubats to get to the maximum speed value; EV training for any more Speed will become useless if you choose to continue after 255.Now, I can imagine some of you thinking, "Wow, I don't want to battle 255 pokemon to gill up on Speed Evs." Well the good news is that you don't.The maximum points you can get for any selected stat is 255, right? that's exactly what it is, a maximum. There are a bunch of ways to lesson theEv training and make it less daunting.Let's start with the simplest. Remember all those Proteins at the Energy Guru that cost 9800 pokedollars a piece? (not when it's on sale day)Those give 10 Effort Points to any Pokemon's attack stat. HP UP, Calcium, Iron, Carbos, and Zinc are similar of course, giving 10 Effort Points to their correspodnding stat.But once again, this would make it too easy to EV train and will result in a limit. The reason that those extra proteins that couldn't be used on your ultra-tough Blaziken wouldn't work could be one of two reasons: 1. The stat is already maxed out on EV points,or 2. you already ised ten proteins on the Blaziken. Since you can only use 10 vitamins on a single stat, this gives you 100 Effort Values posiible to each stat this way.If you're one who is looking for a rounded way of giving Effort Points to a pokemon and carries a lot of money around, you could easily buy all 10 vitamins and you will have already maxed out your Effort Values this way.There's two more ways to make the whole EV training process go faster. Remember the Macho Brace from that house north of Mauville city?That brace will double Effort Points gained. Suddenly you earn 2 Effort Points for each Zubat wearing the brace.Have you heard about the elusive Pokerus? That does the exact same thing as the Macho brace. So now you have a Ninetales carrying a Macho Brave with the Pokerus, and you just defeated a Spinda.Since Spinda gives out1 Effort Point to Special Attack, and you have both thePokerus and Macho brae, you get 4 Effort Points to Special Attack, which results in you gaining one more point to Special Attack on your next level-up.Suddenly that 255 becomes 64 pokemon that you have to battle to fill the Effort points up. Of course, thePokerus doesn't appear that easily, so good luck trying to get it.If you want to know if your Pokemon can earn more Effort Points, there's a woman in Slateport's outdoor sales area that will give you a ribbon if you have aquired 510 Effort Points, figuratibely called the "Effort Ribbon."Do not use Rare candys, they doesn't boost your stats while you are leveling up. It's good to use it if you have already maxed EV, or you have one level left to evolve your Pokemon